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There are several widely-accepted rubrics (Quality Matters, the ION one in Illinois, etc.), but in my opinion, they focus on course design, not on teaching the course. When I was at Black Hawk College, we created a Best Practices for Exemplary Online Teaching set of standards based on the Chickering and Gamson's "7 Principles of Good Practice for Undergraduate Education" meta-analysis. Individual best practices for online teaching were pulled from the literature and listed as possibilities under each of the 7 principles, and an 8th was added with some of the course design elements not already mentioned in the first 7. In other words, we created a local document that could assist faculty in doing self-assessment, peer evaluations of each other's courses, and potentially institutional review of online courses. However, our instrument was not used for institutional assessment because it was not approved as part of the faculty [union] contract. It is important for a document like this to be shared with the faculty ahead of time so that they know how their courses are going to be evaluated. I also think it is helpful to have several people evaluate various aspects of online courses, such as someone who is an expert in online education who can evaluate the learning experiences and course design elements of the course, someone from the faculty member's department who can evaluate the quality and accuracy of the course content, as well as the administrator whose job it is to evaluate teaching. If the institution uses a type of rubric or assessment document when evaluating face-to-face teaching, it needs to be vetted by online experts to determine if it emphasizes appropriate, comparable variables in the online environment. For example, if activities to promote student engagement is on that form...what does that look like online? Not all administrators or faculty who have not taught online would know what to look for as indicators of student engagement.

We have an opportunity in course design, to bring all of the stake-holders to the table. Course design should not just be up to a dept. or a single teacher. Course development can be an opportunity to bring in a librarian, someone from student advising, disabled student services and programs, and developmental education. A course design process can show an instructor how to connect their classroom with other students, instructors, and experts in the field. It can be an opportunity to connect students with professional networks as well as other colleges and schools.  What I have been finding is that when you bring everyone to the table to talk about a course, you can discover many different ways to connect your course to the community than you would have ever thought of yourself.

The instructional design staff supporting faculty developing online courses historically focused primarily on faculty receiving a course release for one semester for which their department was compensated under an award from the Provost's office. The goal was to complete development within this one semester. Unfortunately, that was a rare occurrence. As a result, many course development projects lingered, funds were encumbered, and online courses were taught without being completely developed and reviewed for quality assurance. In the Spring of 2013, the approach changed. we invited faculty receiving awards to join a community focusing on the practice of developing high-quality online courses. We adopted a cohort approach to project-based professional development in the form of an online course.

"Retrieving legacy files As the old dropbox knew no separation of files by assignment (one of its major limitations), it was not possible to move these files into assignments during the upgrade, and there is no storage area facility available into which they could have been moved, so they are not directly accessible within the application after an upgrade or in courses restored from earlier versions. The old dropbox code used Perl, which has been completely removed from the web application in release 9, so the dropbox cannot be accessed anymore to retrieve the legacy files. A rudimentary Java-based interface is being provided to enable each user individually to download any legacy files they may wish to retrieve. These files can then be submitted in newly created assignments as desired or stored in one's Virtual Hard Drive inside the Blackboard Content System, if that is licensed by the institution and enabled by the system administrator. Unfortunately this interface is not exposed via any link in the application. System administrators or helpdesk staff can however make available such a link to their users, either assisting them with file retrieval on an individual basis or by publishing the download link to their users, e.g. in a system announcement. Community Engagement license holders may also wish to add an HTML portal module with this link, thus simplifying the download process, or add it as external link to the tool panel (in the portal menu column). The location of this interface (relative to your server root) is: /webapps/blackboard/execute/ddb It is important to note that this is not a file system location. You actually have to access the URL via a web browser! Sample HTML for a portal module named something like "Digital Dropbox Download": Download your digital dropbox files here When a user accesses this link, he will either see a message that no files were found for him, or a list of courses in w

"5 Keys to Rapid Course Development in Canvas Using Custom Tools"

The CIDI team implemented these open source tools by utilizing a "template wizard" and other supplementary custom tools to quickly build out course shells. ID's meet with instructors to create a course map, and based on an individualized needs analysis for the new course, the shell can be created in Canvas using 5 custom integrations.

This is our first large scale production "end of semester" with Canvas. We tried to capture the most important points without overwhelming you with details. Additionally, as Instructure receives feedback, Canvas behavior may change from what is outlined here. We will do our best to keep you informed with the latest changes from Instructure. At this time, there is no set time limit for courses to exist in Canvas. The college is discussing an appropriate time frame. Until this time frame is decided, we will not be deleting courses. We still recommend taking steps to back up important items from your course, especially the grade book and course structure.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have the potential to enable free university-level education on an enormous scale. A concern often raised about MOOCs is that although thousands enrol for courses, a very small proportion actually complete the course. The release of information about enrollment and completion rates from MOOCs appears to be ad hoc at the moment - that is, official statistics are not published for every course. This data visualisation draws together information about enrollment numbers and completion rates from across online news stories and blogs.

CW Search is a search engine dedicated to increasing access to the information found in the best free university courses online. Several universities publish their course materials for free online, under the OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiative, as described on the OpenCourseWare Consortium website. OCW Search is an independent search engine that indexes all these courses so you can find these courses faster.

LMS that allows anyone to set up course and charge fees. Anybody can create a course by bundling articles, documents and videos into consecutive lessons that students work through at their own pace. A Q&A section attached to each course becomes its forum, and users can see who else is enrolled in the course.

We recommend making an archived copy of your site if you'd like this content preserved, and we are happy to work with faculty who need assistance in recreating content located in areas that we cannot move. For more information on making an archived copy of your course, see 

Use bFree to open a Blackboard™ course archive file and display an outline of the course. Preview and extract individual content items, or extract any or all content as an independent web site that mimics the original Blackboard™ course.

complete course in course design in canvas, I believe. from U of Utah

"Canvas has drastically improved this process, so you should be able to easily import courses from your existing Blackboard course archive files. [Learn more about finding your course archives.] "

Blackboard, UNCP's course management system, is available to instructors who are interested in online teaching and learning, either to enhance a campus-based course or to create a course entirely online. Blackboard offers a rich variety of tools for posting materials online and facilitating interaction with and among students. We believe you will be pleased with Blackboard 9.1. On-demand Learning Center - Interactive Videos  

This document is a code of best practices designed to help those preparing OpenCourseWare (OCW) to interpret and apply fair use under United States copyright law. The OCW movement, which is part of the larger Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, was pioneered in 2002, when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched its OpenCourseWare initiative, making course materials available in digital form on a free and open basis to all. In 2005, MIT helped to organize with the support of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation a group of not-for-profit organizations interested in following the OpenCourseWare model and standardizing the delivery of OCW material. This group of institutions, known as the OCW Consortium (OCWC), has grown into a concern of more than 200 universities worldwide promoting universal access to knowledge on a nonprofit basis. The mission of OCWC is "to advance formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality educational materials organized as courses."

This will be a great resource as we help faculty/students put more content online. "This document is a code of best practices designed to help those preparing OpenCourseWare (OCW) to interpret and apply fair use under United States copyright law. The OCW movement, which is part of the larger Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, was pioneered in 2002, when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched its OpenCourseWare initiative, making course materials available in digital form on a free and open basis to all. In 2005, MIT helped to organize with the support of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation a group of not-for-profit organizations interested in following the OpenCourseWare model and standardizing the delivery of OCW material. This group of institutions, known as the OCW Consortium (OCWC), has grown into a concern of more than 200 universities worldwide promoting universal access to knowledge on a nonprofit basis. The mission of OCWC is "to advance formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality educational materials organized as courses."

Public Canvas courses

Training for students, instructors, + "Public Courses about Canvas"

 The History of Architecture, a free course that recently debuted on iTunes. Taught by Jacqueline Gargus at Ohio State, the course features 39 video lectures that collectively offer a classic survey of Western architecture. We begin in Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, laying the conceptual foundations for what's to come.

We recommend that unless you absolutely need to import a Blackboard course, it is always best to start fresh with a new course. However, we realize that this is not always possible for instructors.

The Online Faculty Competency Certification program is intended for future and existing online teachers. The program is designed to help faculty members become proficient in the use of Blackboard and to become effective facilitators in the online environment.

Samuel Merrit U Canvas courses